Introduction to Old English
ENMD 501 (fall 2000)

Most of your time in this course will be spent learning Old English,
the Germanic language spoken by the Anglo-Saxons in Britain from
about the middle of the fifth
century until around the end of the eleventh century
A.D. For this part of the course, our textbook is A Guide to
Old English, by Bruce Mitchell and Fred C. Robinson.
You will also make use of
Old
English Aerobics, a set of on-line exercises for this course.

We will spend as much time as we can discussing Old
English literature and Anglo-Saxon culture, but the pressures
on our time will be such that you will have to learn much of this
material outside the classroom. For the literary/cultural part
of the course, our textbooks are Kevin Crossley-Holland,
The Anglo-Saxon World (an anthology of competent
translations from Old English and Latin sources) and
Malcolm Godden and Michael Lapidge,
eds., The Cambridge Companion to Old English Literature.
In your study of the culture, you should also
make use of the
Tour
of Anglo-Saxon Culture on this Web site.
You can access the Tour with a password, which you will find
on your printed syllabus, and which you may obtain
while logged in to any on-grounds computer (click
here
to get the password).

Getting Started

Your first assignment is to read the first
two chapters, pp. 11-16,
of A Guide to Old English. Chapter 1 (pp. 11-12)
tells you what Old English is. Chapter 2
(pp. 13-16)
teaches you how to pronounce it. Practice making the sounds mentioned
in this part.
Your roommate/spouse/whatever may give you funny
looks, but this is the term in which you will get over your embarrassment
about making odd noises in public, and you may as well begin now.

Your second assignment is to turn to pp. 171-72
of the Guide and read aloud the practice sentences
under A and B. If possible, use the
Pronunciation
Practice exercises in this Web site (I intend to redo these
in a better format, but for the time being some computers may not run
them properly).
Don't just imagine that you are reading these passages aloud,
and don't mumble. Read slowly in a loud, clear voice. In
Part A especially, remember that although the words look like
Modern English, they will sound different.
Keep your finger at Chapter 2
so you can refer back to the section on pronunciation. Read the
sentences aloud repeatedly until you think you have got them right.

Your third assignment is to read Patrick Wormald's "Anglo-Saxon
Society and Its Literature" in The Cambridge Companion, pp.
1-22. I will distribute a schedule of further readings in a few days.

Once you have done these three assignments, you will
be ready for the Friday class, in which you will read the practice
sentences aloud.

The Rest of the Work

The work for the course includes a little quiz every other Friday
and a brief final
exam. Undergraduates will write a short paper at the end of the
term; graduate students will write a somewhat longer one.

The biweekly quizzes
will take a half hour each, and then we will have
class for the remaining twenty minutes. The quizzes are designed
to measure how well you have learned to read Old English. They
are very straightforward and their format is always the same.

The final
exam is exactly like the quizzes, only bigger, and it covers more
material.